Man I feel like a woman
by Zessei
Summary: One morning, inexplicably enough, Sherlock turns in to a woman.


**Title:** Man (I feel like a woman)  
><strong>Series:<strong> Sherlock BBC  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG  
><strong>Words:<strong> ~6.5K  
><strong>CharactersPairing:** Sherlock, John, Lestrade, GEN  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> This is silly. Oh so silly. Other than that absolutely none  
><strong>Notes:<strong> Beta'd and Brit Picked by the fabulous elethe on LJ  
><strong>Summary:<strong> One morning, quite explicably, Sherlock turns in to a woman.

**Man (I feel like a woman)**

It was seven forty-eight in the morning when John descended from his room and made his way, bleary-eyed, into the sitting room. It was no earlier than when he usually awoke but John had spent half the night listening to the muted bangs and clangs, and once swearing, of Sherlock at work on some sort of experiment. After four months John knew he should be used to the noise and bother at ungodly times in the morning, but he was not, and his sleep continued to suffer for it.

"Sherlock," he began, entirely intent on berating the man once again for his inconsideration, when a strange and foreign sight brought him up short. There was a woman standing in the sitting room. She wasn't anyone John knew, which meant little honestly as John rarely knew any of Sherlock's guests, but he had never seen a guest at this time in the morning that wasn't either Mycroft or Lestrade (or Mrs Hudson, but she hardly counts).

Then the woman looked up at him and John felt he jaw drop.

"_Sherlock?_" he gasped, because it was indeed Sherlock, not that he could hardly believe it.

The woman ('Sherlock' John's mind insisted) was tall, but a little shorter than the usual (male) Sherlock. She was still taller than John though which would have rankled if John hadn't already been so resigned to his stature. She was also very thin. John had always felt Sherlock was a little too thin for his own good but somehow it was easier to tell in this new female form. The male Sherlock's clothes hung off sharp shoulders and bony hips and this new Sherlock possessed few curves to speak of; a tiny swelling at the chest, a dip at the waist, a minute flair at the hip.

It was the face that was most different, and yet it was the face where John could most clearly see Sherlock. The curve of the jaw was softer and the ridge of the brow wasn't as heavy, but the cheekbones were still ridiculously sharp and the nose was just as aristocratic (if shaped a bit more for a woman's face). The eyes were a little bigger; the lashes thicker and longer, the dark fan of them making the stranger colour of the irises stand out in sharp contrast. The hair was just as black but it was longer now, curling around the neck and just brushing narrower shoulders. It was still a mess of shaggy curls, though.

"Sherlock?" he said again because he really just couldn't believe it.

"Well of course." Sherlock said in a voice higher than the norm now that he lacked an Adam's apple in a throat that was even more swan-like now that he was female. And should he be using female pronouns now? John wasn't quite sure. "Who else would I be?" The nose wrinkled delicately, as though the idea of Sherlock being anyone but Sherlock no matter what the body was too terrible to be contemplated.

"You're a woman!" John exclaimed, because he really couldn't quite get past that fact.

"Obviously." Sherlock's tone suggested that John might have somehow lost about twenty IQ points between the night before and that morning.

"You're a woman!" It really needed to be said twice. "How… I mean what… Are you a woman all the way through?" Sherlock looked at him as though he were the worst kind of idiot and a pervert besides.

"No don't answer that I really, _really_ don't want to know." And he didn't. John's mind was rebelling at just the notion of it. "How on earth did you manage this?" His tone was strangled as he asked.

"In all honesty," Sherlock fidgeted as he (she?) hesitated, looking awkward and uncomfortable, "I'm not quite sure."

"You're not quite sure?" John gaped. Since when has Sherlock not been sure of anything?

"There was an… accident, this morning." She (he?) eventually bit out, sounding as though the words pained him (her?).

"An accident?" John frowned in scepticism, raising a hand to massage at the bridge of his nose where a headache of truly prodigious proportions had formed. Oddly enough he wasn't that surprised Sherlock had somehow managed to turn himself female completely by accident.

"I was doing some tests on that unknown compound we found in the apartment of the murdered chemist from two cases back, you remember, yes?" Sherlock paused to wait for confirmation that, yes, John remembered. It was only two weeks before, he wasn't going senile not matter what Sherlock seemed to believe about his mental faculties. "Well, during one of the tests the substance it, well, it sort of exploded."

"It exploded." John deadpanned.

"Yes." confirmed Sherlock.

"And that caused you to spontaneously turn female?" John raised a brow at him (her?). '_Forget it, I'm referring to him as a her_.' John decided just to spite Sherlock, even if only in his own mind.

"I did not spontaneously turn female, John." Sherlock wrinkled her slightly smaller and slimmer nose in derision. "The explosion caused the compound to become gaseous. I inhaled quite a bit of the gas and that evidently lead to my becoming temporarily female in form. Obviously it was not spontaneous as there was a clear catalyst heralding the transformation."

"Wait, temporarily? So you're not going to be stuck like this?" John couldn't help the sweeping feeling of relief this news had given him. He would stick by Sherlock's side no matter what form he was in; man, woman, alien (which now that John thought of it he just might already be), but he couldn't deny that things would be much simpler if Sherlock would just stay male.

"Well, I assume it will be temporarily. Surely once the gas works its way through my system I will return to normal. If not I suppose I will have to find some sort of cure." Sherlock shrugged, like the possibility of not reverting to male isn't that big a deal.

"Okay. All right." John said before turning to head in to the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" asked Sherlock as she watched John make his way carefully around the table still laden with the remains of Sherlock's experiment.

"If you're going to be a woman for an indeterminable amount of time I need tea, or maybe coffee." John opened one of the cabinets before he thought better of it and opened the cabinet where they kept the booze instead. "Actually what I think I really need is some alcohol."

"A little early in the morning isn't it?" Sherlock questioned as John pulled a bottle of whisky down and poured a good bit of it down his throat without bothering with a tumbler.

"Sherlock you're a woman, a _woman_. I think I'm entitled to a little early morning booze." With that he took another gulp, sighing as the burn of alcohol made its way to his stomach.

It took Sherlock an hour in the bathroom to get ready for the day, which was only about five minutes longer than it usually took. When Sherlock could be bothered she was almost fastidious in her grooming, when she couldn't be bothered she tended to lay about on the sofa with frightening bedhead and rumpled pyjamas.

When Sherlock finally emerged from the bath she was dressed in a pair of slacks and a jacket which were smaller than the norm and clearly a couple years out of date. Under the maroon jacket she wore, instead of one of the usual expensive shirts, a white T-shirt that probably cost more than John would have spent on an entire suit.

"Sherlock, where did you get those clothes?" John asked. It wasn't as though John expected Sherlock to come down in a skirt and blouse but he was surprised Sherlock managed to find something that didn't hang of her now smaller body. Rather absently, John thought he was having too much fun thinking of Sherlock in feminine pronouns.

"Ah, well actually they are left over from before." Sherlock had the slightly sheepish look she took on every time they make mention of the drug habit she had a couple years ago. "I was quite a bit, er, thinner, then."

John couldn't imagine Sherlock being any thinner than she was now. Well, actually he could, and it was vaguely terrifying.

"I am however lacking shoes," Sherlock said with a frown directed at her bare feet. The female Sherlock's feet were substantially smaller than the male Sherlock's, the toes weren't quite so gangly and the veins didn't stand out quite so much, but they were just as blindingly white.

A thought occurred to John and he can't help but mention it, even though the thought of an answer horrified him just a little.

"What did you do for under things?" Sherlock sent him another one of those looks that implied John was the worst kind of deviant moron and didn't deign to answer.

"I should be able to borrow a pair of shoes from Mrs Hudson. Our feet are now the same size." John was not at all surprised that Sherlock not only knew Mrs Hudson's shoe size, but could tell without measuring that it was now the same as her own.

"What do you need shoes for? We're just going to be in the flat all day." While John took care to always keep his feet shod, wary of what debris from various experiments and tantrums might be hiding in the carpet, Sherlock had never bothered.

"Hmm?" Sherlock mumbled, distracted as she began going through the piles on the desk, looking for something. "No. Lestrade texted while I was in the shower, we have a case." She pulled out her wallet with a cry of triumph and shoved it unceremoniously into her trouser pocket.

"Uh-uhn, no way!" John shakes his head emphatically and moves to stand in front of Sherlock, blocking the path. "In case you didn't notice you are currently a woman." This time the look Sherlock sent to him clearly indicated that, were Sherlock any less eloquent, she would have been saying 'No, duh.' to this statement of the obvious.

"I don't see what that has to do with anything. We have a case John, a case! And it might even be an interesting one!" Sherlock narrowed her eyes in frustration and John thought it was somehow even scarier than when she did that as a male.

"You are a woman! You are not supposed to be a woman! Normal people will freak out! You'll be kidnapped by the government or crazy mad scientists and have all sorts of experiments performed on you!" John told him, waving his arms frantically in the air. John didn't really think Sherlock would be kidnapped and experimented on but he just knows that not everyone would be as excepting of this as he himself was. Maybe Mrs Hudson, but she tended to take everything in her stride with the long-suffering disposition of a saint, or the mother of a rather rambunctious seven-year-old.

"That's ridiculous," Sherlock stated derisively, huffing a rather delicate sound through her nose. "In case you forgot Mycroft is the government, he won't let anyone experiment on me… probably."

John just _looked_ at her, waiting. Sherlock huffed, and sighed, and pouted in a way that was much more effective female than it ever was before. Eventually Sherlock's face took on a countenance of almost unholy glee. Clearly she had an idea and John was almost positive he was not going to like it.

"All right, I won't go then." John didn't let himself feel victorious, he just _knew_ the other shoe was about to drop. "Sheryl will go."

"Who the hell is Sheryl?" John asked, highly suspicious. He actually had a pretty good idea just who 'Sheryl' was, but he figured he could hope he was wrong.

"My twin sister of course." Sherlock looks positively ecstatic.

"You do not have a twin sister. You have a mildly scary brother, not a sister of any kind, especially of the twin variety." John told her, like she might have forgotten.

"Of course I don't have a sister." Sherlock rolled her eyes and sighed. "But Lestrade doesn't know that. We make up some story about me being out of town so I sent my sister Sheryl instead. She's my twin so she'll be just as clever as me, clearly."

"Twins, especially fraternal twins, don't always have the same IQ." John pointed out, mostly to be difficult.

"Like a Holmes would ever be anything but brilliant," Sherlock scoffed arrogantly. Arrogance sat awkwardly on female Sherlock's face, though male Sherlock looked as though he were born with that expression.

"This is a bad idea." John waved a finger in his face. "It's an awful, no good, terrible idea. But I know I can't stop you, so I going to go and watch you make a fool of yourself and then I'm going to laugh so hard I might just suffocate but it will be entirely worth it."

Sherlock swept out the door almost before John finished speaking, heading to 221A in order to pound on Mrs Hudson's door to borrow some shoes. John was just glad Sherlock didn't try to hail a cab barefoot; it would not have been the first time.

The shoes Mrs Hudson ended up giving Sherlock were four inch black pumps that put her about an inch taller than her normal, male, height. Aside from a brief moment of shock Mrs Hudson had very little to say on the whole affair other than, "I always thought you'd make a lovely girl, Sherlock." John wasn't even very surprised. Mrs Hudson always was slightly daffy.

What John was surprised about was Sherlock's ability to walk in four inch heels, or rather, her lack thereof. John had never seen Sherlock be anything less than graceful so watching him stumble from getting his heel caught in broken London pavements was a new, slightly unnerving, experience.

"Damnable things!" Sherlock cried as her heel skidded across the uneven surfaces. "Why on earth do women insist on wearing these things? They are completely impractical and, quite frankly, a hazard."

"Well, probably most women are a bit more practised at walking in them than you." John pointed out reasonably.

"Ugh, and don't get me started on the impracticalities of breasts." Sherlock (John just can't think of her as Sheryl, even female) muttered while pulling at something under her shirt.

"Ah, just what are you wearing under there anyway?" John couldn't help it. He was fascinated by this question, in the same way one is fascinated by large, destructive fires or tsunamis. One knows one should be running for the hills, but one can't help but to stop and stare (or in this case, ask).

"If you must know," Sherlock began, sending a look at John that made her opinion of this question quite clear. "I taped them down using a couple rolls of bandages."

"Really? You do realise that's actually quite bad for you, right? That kind of pressure can cause soreness, deformation and sensitivity. Plus if you tighten the bandages too tightly they can make breathing difficult and limit respiration." Sometimes John can't help spouting off diagnoses, he blames the professor he had back in med school who had delighted in posing hypothetical situations to his students not only in class but in hallways, cafeterias, lifts (and once, uncomfortably enough, in the men's lavatory).

"I seriously doubt one day of it will be sufficient enough to cause any long term harm. I don't plan on being female long enough for it to matter." Sherlock looked down her nose at John, a move made only more impressive by the extra inch of height from her pumps.

John would have argued more but by that point the first line of crime scene tape had been reached. The case Lestrade had texted about was located in one of the nicer areas of London, a tree lined avenue with large, historic house sat back from the road. One of these houses was literally swarming with police men, and that was the home Sherlock made a beeline for, stumbling once over the kerb. John sighed as he took Sherlock's elbow, allowing the unsteady detective to lean on him for balance.

No one stopped them as they made their way up the path towards the door swathed in yellow tape. Sherlock mumbled under her breath about incompetent officers who are just begging for someone to come in and destroy the scene but John thought it more likely to be that officers recognized him even if they didn't Sherlock. Three steps and they were about to swing open the door when it flew open from the inside instead.

Anderson stood there looking vaguely startled, before his eyes shifted to Sherlock and he took on what was clearly meant to be a charming countenance.

"Hello there." Anderson said, trying to sound smooth. "Place like this isn't really suite for a lady like you."

"No. Oh, no. No, no, no." Sherlock protested, a look of horror twisting her pretty features. "You are not flirting with me. If you are I think I might have to hit you, or possibly disembowel you. You are not allowed to flirt with me, in fact you are not allowed to as much as look at me. I do believe I might vomit if you do."

Anderson had a look on his face like he had just been smacked with a very large tuna and John was nearly dying from trying to hold in his laughter. Lestrade was not bothering to be so polite and guffawed behind Anderson like that was the funniest joke he heard all week. Sally stood behind them both looking quite put out at Anderson flirting with another woman in front of her. John didn't know why she would expect any better from a man who had no problem cheating on his wife. Eventually everyone got themselves under control, although Sherlock was still watching Anderson's hands like she expected them to move somewhere inappropriate should she look away, and Lestrade turned to John with a question on his face.

"Who's this then, Dr Watson?" Lestrade made an aborted gesture at Sherlock. "Where's Sherlock?"

"Ah, this is… Sheryl," John said before finding himself at a loss for words.

"I'm Sherlock's sister, his twin to be accurate." Sherlock finished for him. The reactions to this statement were instantaneous and hilarious. Anderson recoiled as though struck, Lestrade gaped as though he had never seen a woman before in his life, and Sally made a noise like a hamster gripped too hard in someone's fist.

"You must be joking." Sally gasped out. "You're telling me the freak has _family_; that someone actually gave _birth_ to him? I'd always thought he'd congealed out of a gutter somewhere, or maybe some mad scientist type built him in a lab."

"Donovan." Lestrade chided in warning. While the occasionally name calling didn't bother him he felt some things were going a little too far.

"No, seriously, someone gave birth to that creature? What on earth was his mother taking during that pregnancy?" Anderson laughed loudly at his own joke, until his head snapped back with the force of a very loud and resounding slap.

All eyes turned to Sherlock who was looking furious, in a placid sort of way.

"You may say what you will about me… and my brother," she added hurriedly, "but my mother is a saint and I will allow neither you nor anyone else to disparage her."

There elapsed an interlude of stunned silence where no one moved, John wasn't even sure if any of them were breathing. Eventually Lestrade turned to Anderson looking angry and stern.

"Apologise," he ordered. "Now."

"What? But she slapped me!" Anderson protested, looking highly offended.

"It was no more than you deserved. _I_ would have slapped you had you said things like that about my mum, and I don't even like her that much." Lestrade's expression was hard and he wouldn't be mollified until Anderson followed his command.

Anderson mumbled out a surly and unconvincing apology but Lestrade took what he could get before turning back to Sherlock.

"Look, Ms Holmes, it's very nice to meet you and everything, but where's your brother? We sort of need him here." Lestrade looked slightly constipated at having to admit that.

"Sherlock is in Devonshire, visiting Mummy," Sherlock told Lestrade. John wondered if 'Mummy' even lived in Devonshire. "As I was in town he asked me to take a look for him. Also, you may call me Sheryl."

Lestrade looked unconvinced but eventually he sighed and motioned Sherlock (or Sheryl) in to the house.

"Might as well. If you're half as clever as your brother you're still twice as intelligent as some of these officers." Lestrade muttered, half to himself. Sherlock smirked as she stepped over the threshold. "The body is in the room on the first floor."

The first floor room looked like a leftover from the Regency era, even though John was almost certain the house was not half as old as that. The carpet was a thick pink wool affair woven with large cabbage roses, John sunk into it just a bit and Sherlock wavered on her four inch heels as they dug into the plushness. Heavy brocade curtains hung at the windows (embroidered with another floral pattern that matched neither the cabbage roses in the carpet nor the striped wallpaper on the half-panelled walls), drawn shut to stave off fading of the furnishings. The furniture itself was all made of carved dark wood and dusky pink velvet. Overstuffed, overlarge, and just plain over-everything, the room was cloying and claustrophobic, and the thick smell of potpourri didn't help. The room offended John's English male sensibilities and aesthetics.

The body next to the coffee table and the noose hanging from the chandelier were jarring in the midst of such a feminine haven.

"Please tell me you didn't call me, I mean my, brother here for a suicide," Sherlock said, displeased, striding up to the body in order to nudge the head with one of her pumps. The nudge caused the head to loll, displaying the neck of the man lying spread on the carpet. "Never mind." Sherlock swung around to begin inspecting the walls. "John." She fluttered her hand at the body in a way that would have been wholly female if she didn't do it while male as well.

John rolled his eyes as he ambled over to the body, crouching down to begin a cursory inspection of the tall corpse.

"Who took the body down?" Sherlock called from the corner where she squinted at what looked to John like a mouse hole.

"Paramedics." Lestrade answered, flipping through his small pocket note book. "The victim's mother called an ambulance when she couldn't open the door and her son wasn't answering her or any of the other members of the house. They had to break open the door." Lestrade gestured to the door even though Sherlock was not looking at him at all so she couldn't have seen it.

"I already knew that." Sherlock snapped, tottering slightly on his shoes as she stood from her crouch. "I meant _why_ did they take him down?"

"Well, I suppose they thought he might still be alive." Lestrade shrugged.

"All they managed to do was disturb the scene." The rest of Sherlock's tirade was lost to dark mumblings as she began thumping on the wall.

John ignored all this, focusing on his examination of the body. He bent the arms to check stiffness and smelled the mouth to check for drugs and alcohol. Mostly he paid attention to the neck, where deep bruising had formed, and at the fingers, where scrapes and rope burn could be seen.

"Well, it's definitely not a suicide," John remarked, sitting back on his heels.

"Yes, yes." Sherlock did another hand flap in his direction, magnifying glass out to examine the wallpaper. "More."

"The neck isn't broken, death was by strangulation. The bruising on the neck isn't consistent with hanging, though. The marks are too low on the neck and slant downwards towards the back, probably the murderer was shorter than the victim. The victim fought back, scrabbling at the rope that was choking him." John lifted one of the corpse's hands to show Lestrade the fingers. "He's been dead maybe two hours, no rigor mortis."

"That's what we thought." Lestrade nodded. "Although we hadn't figured out the murderer was shorter."

"Why did you call for Sherlock then?" John asked as he climbed back to his feet.

"Think, John!" Sherlock called from where she had been testing each of the windows. "The door was locked. And so are these windows." He yanked one last time on one of the windows before returning to her close perusal of the wallpaper.

"Oh. And I suppose that the door was locked from the inside?"

"Yes! So how did the murderer get out!" Sherlock started thumping on the walls again. "Did he climb up the chimney? Of course not! There must be a hidden passage somewhere."

"We already asked the family about any other entrances to the room, Sheryl." Lestrade almost stumbled over the name. "There are none."

"This is an old house. At least Edwardian." Sherlock told him, hair falling across her brow as she looked over her shoulder. Sherlock blew it from her face impatiently.

"That old?" John muttered, surprised.

"Yes. There have been many renovations of course," Sherlock explained. "And these aren't the original owners. The family that owned the house originally was of a minor peerage, they ran in to money problems and sold the house ten, no, eleven years ago. This family comes from a lower class background but came in to money via the grandfather of the victim, who started his own business at a young age, that was, clearly, very successful. Since then they have been trying desperately to prove themselves to the upper classes using their wealth." Sherlock looked disdainfully around the room. "It is not working."

"What the hell does that have to do with anything!" Lestrade cried out, frustration making him impatient.

Sherlock rolled her eyes, a movement she had picked up weeks ago from Molly of all people.

"While it was not particularly common it also was not particularly rare for houses such as these to have narrow passages behind the walls so that servants could move about unnoticed by the residents or guests, usually these passages ended in unobtrusive doors, noticeable but hardly worth paying attention to.

"Sometimes these passages ended in hidden doors built in to the panelling of the wall. The family who bought this home did not know about the passages and doors and wallpapered over it, with rather distasteful wallpaper if you ask me." Here Sherlock paused to cast a baleful eye over the striped paper.

"The murderer found an entrance into the passage, probably in either the kitchen or butler's pantry - perhaps the servants' quarters but more likely the butler's pantry. He realised that one led to this door which had been sealed. This is when the murderer came up with his idea. He used a knife with a very thin, very sharp blade to cut the wallpaper precisely over the crack of the door, making it unnoticeable, so that the door would work when he needed it, then he waited for his chance to lure the victim in here, locked the door, murdered the man, strung him up to make it look like suicide, and left through the hidden door."

"So our murderer is male then? Sheryl?" Lestrade asked her after everyone had taken a moment to absorb what Sherlock had said.

"Hmm?" Sherlock looked up from where she had been nudging at the carved walnut panelling that constituted the bottom half of the walls. "What? No. I mean, it might be a male, but I suppose it could be female. The attacker's height was about…" Sherlock looked at the body and then looked up to the ceiling, making calculations. "A hundred and seventy centimetres, a little taller than average for a female and shorter than average for a male but well within the standard deviation for both. Of course the murderer had to be strong enough to subdue the victim and then hang him so it's very likely the murderer was male - but there is no evidence to suggest it wasn't a woman either. Ah!" Sherlock gasped out the last bit and a moment of startled joy and a gleeful smile spread over her face as a small click was heard around the room.

A small bit of the wall swung open just enough for Sherlock to pry her fingers in between the newly revealed door and the jamb. She was able to pull it open silently, muttering about oil and hinges as she did, to expose a tiny passage maybe half a metre wide. John, Lestrade, and a handful of other officers converged on Sherlock and tried to peer in to the passageway.

Dust and cobwebs littered the narrow hall, several sets of footprints lying scuffed over the wood floor. The only light came from the room behind them, the passage fading away in to complete darkness after a few metres.

"How did you know there'd be a secret passage?" John asked, shocked Sherlock actually managed to find it.

"Our house had one growing up, including a tunnel that led to the stables," Sherlock replied. She crouched down precariously on her heels to get a better look at the floor. "These all belong to one person."

"I knew it! I knew you were rich!" John cried, pointing an accusing finger at Sherlock. "I bet it was a great big mansion in the country side with acres of lands and a butler named Jeeves."

"Don't be ridiculous." Sherlock stood so that she could look down her nose at John. "His name was Gary."

"Your butler's name was Gary?" Lestrade asked.

"He was secretly American, but he did a pretty decent British accent." Sherlock explained.

"You had a butler named Gary who was secretly American?" Lestrade stated in disbelief.

"Yes? Is that weird?" Sherlock turned to John. "Why is that weird?"

"It just is, Sher-er-ryl." John glanced around nervously to see if anyone had noticed his blunder, aside from Lestrade lifting an eyebrow at him no one was paying attention.

Sherlock frowned at him before huffing through her nose and turning on her heel, nearly toppling over as she did so, to stalk back to the body.

"Hey! What about these footprints!" Lestrade shouted over to her, pointing down.

"Male, size 9, walks forward on the balls of his feet, habit or training? Can't tell." Sherlock shrugged a narrow shoulder as she began sniffing, literally sniffing, around the corpse. Eventually Sherlock stood with a long-suffering sigh and whirled around to make her way out the door. "Boring," she announced.

"Ah, wait." John shoved his way past slightly stunned officers to meet Sherlock at the door.

"Boring?" Lestrade called, planting his hands on his hips. "Just what is so boring?"

"The case! It's boring!" Sherlock cried despondently over her shoulder. "If the brother wears a particularly foul smelling cologne arrest him. He's the one who did it." Then she swept out the door and down the hall heading towards the stairs, John half a pace behind her.

"Where are you going?" Lestrade followed them down the stairs. "Wait just a bloody minute! Sherlock!"

Both Sherlock and John froze in the empty entrance hall, one of Sherlock's hands on the handle of the door, as one the turned to look at a red-faced and huffing Lestrade.

"What are you-"

"Cut the shit, Sherlock." Lestrade told him. "I know you don't think much of my intelligence but I'm not a complete moron you know."

"No, I suppose you're not." Sherlock slipped her hands in to her pockets as she regarded Lestrade with a look of grudging respect. "How did you work it out?"

"You didn't make it hard, Sherlock." Lestrade scowled at them both. "Aside from now having boobs and wearing high heels you're exactly the same. I'd have to have been lobotomised not to realise it was you."

"None of the others worked it out." Sherlock pointed out with a pout.

"They don't know you as well as I do." Lestrade reasoned.

"I suppose you want to know how it happened then?"

"No."

"Well it started with, wait, no?" Sherlock faltered, clearly surprised that anyone would not want to know.

"No. As far as I'm concerned you are not actually a woman, you are dressed in drag, I don't know why, so I'm going to go with 'It's for a case'. Then tonight I'm going to go home and get very, i_very/i_ drunk, and in the morning when I'm still hung-over I'm going to convince myself that it really was just drag and not think about it ever again. Got it?" Lestrade pointed a finger at Sherlock for emphasis. Both Sherlock and John nodded. "I don't want to see you again until you are completely, totally, one-hundred-percent male again. Text me when that happens." With those as his last words he jogged back up the stairs to his crime scene.

"I told you the twin sister thing wasn't going to work," John remarked.

"Don't be stupid, it did work, just not on Lestrade." Sherlock announced before flinging the front door open and practically flouncing down the steps outside.

"Yeah, sure," John snickered.

Sherlock sulked the entire taxi ride back to the flat. Then she sulked as she tripped her way up the stairs. Then she sulked as she threw herself on to the sofa, kicking her heels off over the arm and letting them drop to the floor with two soft thumps.

"Would some chocolate make you feel better?" John asked. He tried to keep his face looking sincere but couldn't help but laugh when Sherlock gave him her darkest expression.

"That's incredibly stereotypical and probably patronising, but yes, I would like some chocolate," Sherlock told him imperiously. "Also, tea."

John laughed louder as he headed to the kitchen to prepare them a snack. When he returned Sherlock was watching a day time talk show and yelling at the screen.

"Of course he's not the father you twit!" She gestured frenetically. "Look at his earlobes!"

"I never should have introduced you to these show," John sighed as he sat a plate down at Sherlock's elbow.

"Hmm?" Sherlock turned towards him briefly before snapping her head back at the screen to berate another woman looking for her baby's daddy on national television.

An hour passed companionably with Sherlock switching between the talk show, a murder mystery, and a documentary on fish hatcheries, managing somehow to keep up with all three.

"So when do you think you'll change genders again?" John eventually asked after his third cup of tea.

"Oh really John, I never switched _genders_." Sherlock rolled her eyes at him. "I switched _sex_. Gender is the social construct with which we identify ourselves, sex refers to the actually physical characteristics that we possess. You as a doctor should know this."

"Now you're just being difficult. You knew what I meant."

"True." Sherlock gave him a crooked smile. "To answer your original question it's already started."

"What?" John yelped before staring piercingly at Sherlock as though he might see Sherlock change right in front of his eyes. "When?"

"About twenty minutes ago. The reversion is happening at a much slower rate than the initial change. I would estimate that at the current rate I won't be completely male again until sometime around two in the morning." Sherlock explained while quickly flipping through the channels on a hunt for more talk shows to watch. "Where's that one show with the guy with two first names?"

"Jeremy Kyle?"

"Yes, that's it!" Sherlock looked over at him anxiously. "What station was that on again?"

"That came on three hours ago," John informed her.

"Oh, really?" Sherlock pouted at the set.

"Sherlock, I've told you numerous times when Jeremy Kyle comes on, why can you never remember it?"

"You mean it comes on at the same time every day?" John almost thought Sherlock was joking, but the honest bewilderment on Sherlock's face said otherwise.

"Yeah," John told her. "Most shows do that."

"Huh." Sherlock focused back on the screen and kept flicking rapidly through the shows. "What about that one about the rich American girls who work on a farm?"

"How about we watch the news?" John suggested as Sherlock got sidetracked by a show about an extreme weight loss competition.

"Oh, boo." Sherlock replied. "The news is so_ boring_."

As Sherlock finally settled on _I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here_ John thought to himself that he really never should have introduced Sherlock to trashy TV.

That night John had ignored every strange sound he heard, after going down to check on the first odd grunting from Sherlock and being informed that his presence was neither needed nor wanted - but just because he ignored them didn't mean he didn't hear them, and it didn't mean he slept at all that night.

It would appear that the transformation back in to a male was much more painful than the original change had been. It also seemed to have made Sherlock clumsy because she kept dropping things and then swearing in an increasingly deeper voice. John couldn't help but cringe every time he heard something shatter in the kitchen.

Eventually, sometime in the dim watery gray of pre-dawn, John managed to drift in to a fitful doze, Sherlock having finally quietened down, at least until a couple hours later when the squawking of the television set alerted John to the fact that Sherlock had turned on one of the early morning chat shows he was enamoured with.

Groaning John made his way down the stairs, holding his breath as he walked through the door and took a look at Sherlock who was sitting on the sofa staring intently at the set and wrapped up tight in his dressing gown.

"Oh, thank god!" John sighed in relief. "You're male again." Sherlock looked over his shoulder with a raised brow before turning lazily to pick up the remote and turn up the volume of the set.

"Yes." Sherlock replied. "Mostly."

"Well it's a good thi- wait, mostly?" John asked sharply casting a probing look at Sherlock, who merely grunted and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Yes, well, it would appear that not all of the effects of the gas I inhaled have dissipated completely. There are a couple lingering side effects that have yet to fade despite the rest of me returning to normal roughly three hours ago." Sherlock explained dryly, gaze firmly locked on his show.

"What kind of side effects?" John asked after a brief moment when the only sound was the slightly shrill voice of the show host.

"Er…" Sherlock hesitated, the very tips of his ears turning pink where they stuck out from under his hair. "It would seem, that is I evidently, what I mean is…"

"Sherlock!" John said in warning.

"I still have breasts!" Sherlock finally spat out in a rush.

"What?" choked out John.

"I still have breasts John, mammary glands, you know?" Sherlock scowled fiercely down at his chest.

"I know what," started John angrily before taking a deep breath and changing course. "How are you going to get rid of them?"

"I'm still hoping that they'll go away on their own. If not I suppose I'll have to find a very discreet plastic surgeon, won't I?" Sherlock's phone gave off the small tone that indicated a text message as he finished and Sherlock nearly lunged to the side table where his phone was, only to throw it ferociously back at the couch once he had read the message.

"What is it?" John asked amused, because if he didn't keep a sense of humour he might very well run out of the room screaming. "And you should ask Harry about surgeons, she got a nose job a few years back."

Sherlock didn't answer, just grimaced even more darkly as he snatched up John's laptop and opened the web browser. John walked over to the sofa to read the message for himself, laughing uproariously once he had.

_What colour would you like  
>for your first training bra?<br>I was thinking pink.  
>MH<em>

**_Reviews are love._**


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